Dear FDEV, Can we re-balance how ARX are earned

I honestly would have preferred if they hadnt introduced earning ARX into the game. The conversion from $ to ARX points was just bringing the game into line with what consoles already had, and while there is the whole premium currency cost I'm ok with all platforms having the same system.

Earning ARX ingame tho puts a psychological pressure to play the game or miss out and that kind of mechanic annoys me to the point that I stopped playing other games that use it. I'll play when I want, how I want not how some psychological push tries to force me to play.

All games have that sort of thing, in some you don't make progress unless you play so there's an incentive. There are variations on it like the mineral mines in NMS that accrue stuff when you are off line as an incentive to log back in. Games with a sub you feel compelled to play or you waste your cash.

TV is the same, you have to watch the current episode to get the next one and so on.

One of my hobbies is archery, the incentive there is getting better over time and winning stuff. I can't do that without regular practice so there's pressure there.

If you enjoy it there's no issue.
 
Just messing around I did 13 assassination and massacre missions ingame, total of around 35 pirate ships to kill.
I noticed that is was coming up to the weekly reset so I waited to turn the missions in until after that to let the weekly ARX reset.
I turn the missions in and log to the menu screen and got a total of 13 ARX.
I then used a material trader to shuffle engineer mats around, mostly the mats I picked up from those pirates as I had used the trader just before I started those missions.
I logged to the menu and had earnt another 80 ARX. 4 time more arx for playing a inventory management grind

I normally defend the way FDEV have handled things, but being rewarded more for a grind mechanic than actually playing the game is something I will not defend.

Gameplay needs to be a priority over grind. Reward players PLAYING the game, not a lossy grind mechanic.

LOL if you think that's bad you should try exploration mate, here's what I bagged the other day from jumping about 7,000 LY and scanning every system en-route

1cbor1Y.jpg


The 83 total for this week is from about 15K LY in total, doing the same. Yeah sure I'll get more when I cash the data in but unless I want to fly round with it for weeks on end selling it a bit at a time, my reward will be further limited by the 400 Arx per week cap. I'll also be missing out on earning up to the cap in any week that I'm still out in the black and considering that I'm about 17K LY away from Beagle Point at the moment, that will definitely be a few weeks.

No open letter going in or anything but really, explorers get the dirty end of the stick. I decide what to do in-game based on what I want to do, not how much Arx I can earn for doing it, but the balance between Arx rewards for scanning and traveling vs rewards when cashing in data could definitely do with a look from FDev.
 
LOL if you think that's bad you should try exploration mate, here's what I bagged the other day from jumping about 7,000 LY and scanning every system en-route

1cbor1Y.jpg


The 83 total for this week is from about 15K LY in total, doing the same. Yeah sure I'll get more when I cash the data in but unless I want to fly round with it for weeks on end selling it a bit at a time, my reward will be further limited by the 400 Arx per week cap. I'll also be missing out on earning up to the cap in any week that I'm still out in the black and considering that I'm about 17K LY away from Beagle Point at the moment, that will definitely be a few weeks.

No open letter going in or anything but really, explorers get the dirty end of the stick. I decide what to do in-game based on what I want to do, not how much Arx I can earn for doing it, but the balance between Arx rewards for scanning and traveling vs rewards when cashing in data could definitely do with a look from FDev.
However, now would be the right time to write a rant post, adding that nobody at FD has responded to you for extra outrage, when Devs are safely tucked away at home for the week. :D
 
And you still get exactly zero for mining.

And very little even when you sell your plunder. From memory, last time I mined I got a massive 6 Arx from selling about a quarter of a billion credits worth of painite :D

It would make sense if activities that had a high credit payout gave low amounts of Arx and vice versa, or at least you could say there's some logical structure to it. Going back to exploration though, you get ball all for the act of actually doing it and then get the chance to miss out on thousands of free Arx due to the weekly cap when you actually get to sell your data. Or to fly around like a nun in a Ferrari for weeks on end selling 400 Arx worth at a time, in which case you're still missing out because you're just recouping the Arx that you could/should have been earning during the weeks you spent put in deep space but at the same time, missing out on the Arx you could be earning in the weeks when you're selling this data.

I hung onto my data from my trip out to Colonia until I was ready to leave there; I'd been selling just enough to hit the cap each week topping up whatever I'd earned in game that week whilst actually at Colonia and I ended up dumping over half of it that I had left after five weeks because I was heading out again and wanted to clear the decks first. During that time I did stuff like painite mining in an unshielded ship, selling up in a aystem under pirate attack and also went res site hunting in a bog standard Cobra Mk3 to unlock one of the Colonia engineers, all whilst carrying over 60m credits of exploration data because if I'd sold the lot immediately I'd have missed out on a load of free Arx due to the weekly cap. As I said, it's not that I plan my gameplay around acquiring Arx but it does suck to have to mess about like that to fully realise the potential free Arx that I've already earned.

There's one very obvious way that could be addressed - allow any unused portion of the 400 Arx per week cap to roll forward. Even if they set it to a ten week maximum or something, that would let you cash in up to 4k's worth on your return if you'd been out in the back end of beyond. They've obviously decided that they consider 400 Arx per week to be a perfectly fine amount to give you for free and it wouldn't increase that at all - it would just mean that if you play the game for ten hours a week but aren't somewhere that you can actually cash in (such as 45K LY outside the bubble) you don't lose out completely.

Obviously I'm not suggesting that just for exploration - it would be viable for any gameplay style. It's particularly relevant for exploration though because the intention of free Arx is obviously to keep players playing the game regularly - explorers can do that but still lose out simply because of where much of their gameplay takes place and the laughable amount of Arx earned for the actual act of exploration
 
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And very little even when you sell your plunder. From memory, last time I mined I got a massive 6 Arx from selling about a quarter of a billion credits worth of painite :D
You can get arx for mining but it's an indirect trick. You get 1 arx/M earned by your crew. So I have learned that with 3 crew garnishing 30% if I sell my cargo 5T at a time I get one arx/transaction. 🤷‍♂️
 
You can get arx for mining but it's an indirect trick. You get 1 arx/M earned by your crew. So I have learned that with 3 crew garnishing 30% if I sell my cargo 5T at a time I get one arx/transaction. 🤷‍♂️

Honestly, I just can't be Arxed with that but I appreciate the tip regardless.
 
With my phone contract I carry over data not used. What if the 400 ARX weekly cap were to be increased where it was not reached in previous weeks? That way getting stuff in before the deadline wouldn't be so much of an issue.
Yes in the philosophy, they do it well when you buy an ARX pack. They can do it in the game too.

:D
 
I normally defend the way FDEV have handled things, but being rewarded more for a grind mechanic than actually playing the game is something I will not defend.

you mean like the whole engineer thing? the guardian puzzles? the countless cg? 'grind' is simply the definition of elite's gameplay. actually, there is no gameplay, that's between the sandbox and you (and optionally your friends).

I'll await a response from an FD employee regarding the current imbalance of arx and playstyle thanks.

hardcore mode. respect!
 
Frontier tells players that they can earn "up to" 400 free ARX a week, just playing the game as they normally would. Then a player puts in twenty hours in a week - which is a pretty good amount of gameplay - and ends up with about 130 ARX.

That player is not going to love Frontier the more for that experience.

Explorers are particularly hard hit. They earn very little while they're out, then when they return to civilization to sell their data - yes, that earns a lot of ARX, but only up to the 400 ARX/week cap: they either hang on to their data and sell it in dribs and drabs over the coming weeks, risking losing it in the process, or they ignore ARX and sell their data as normal, cursing Frontier's name as they do so.

It's almost like the process was designed by some saboteur on the Frontier staff who wanted to do as much damage to Frontier's reputation with the players as they could.

I do try to stick to the view that free ARX aren't worth enough to be bothered over, but I have to say I'm starting to find the whole business irritating on principle.
If this does not suit you, buy ARX packs, the door is wide open.

:D ;)
 
I agree. Sometimes I play for hours and yet earn zero Arxs. Then I go to a CG and get blown up by griefers and earn six Arx per death. If free Arx are meant to be a motivation to play the game, reward me for doing what I love, not what I hate. Otherwise I'll just continue to ignore Arx.
I also hate being forced to play, and also must to play like other people tell me, and also must to give money that I don't use.

Let Elite its fundamental reason for being for over 30 years.

The feeling of freedom.

:)
 
If this is the case for the majority of Cmdrs, then this is a strong indication that the principle of purchasing ARX packs is not appropriate for the Cmdrs.

I don't think a majority could reasonably be estimated without Frontier's assistance. But a significant number seem to have an issue that would be mitigated or solved completely by putting a local currency purchase option back into the shop.


But I have described this several times before as a self-solving problem. If sales are poor it is in FDev's interests to look for ways to improve them. Hopefully feedback threads like this will provide a source of alternatives, or at least help to establish patterns of user behaviour.

One of the last things I bought was the Python Wireframe skin (1/1/2017), I bought it assuming the glaring mistake would be quickly corrected. It still hasn't ;)

Point is sometimes it doesn't take much to discourage further purchases.
 
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